Maximum Velocity

6,800 mph


X-43A Scramjet: World’s fastest aircraft

On November 16, 2004, NASA’s dart-shaped, X-43A scramjet streaked above the Pacific at Mach 9.8, shattering the existing world aviation speed record of Mach 6.8, set last March by another X-43A scramjet flight. Carried aloft under the wings of a B-52B bomber, the X-43A was launched at an altitude of 40,000 feet.

The 12-foot, unmanned research plane was the swan song of NASA’s $230-million, eight-year-long Hyper-X program, which tested the alternative engines that will propel the next generation of space vehicles and, perhaps, civilian airliners. Scramjets—engines that generate combustion from compressed supersonic air and gaseous hydrogen fuel—could power aircraft up to Mach 15, potentially cutting an 18-hour flight from New York to Tokyo down to two hours.


17,895 mph


The JASPER: World’s fastest land-based projectile

Last year, researchers studying how America’s nuclear stockpile will age began testing the properties of plutonium with a gas gun capable of firing a 25-gram projectile that flies 36 times as fast as a typical bullet. The 30-meter JASPER, operated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, fires in two stages. A powdered propellant provides the initial propulsion, and then a blast of compressed hydrogen triggers the extreme velocity. Projectiles 28 millimeters in diameter are shot into nickel-size plutonium targets linked with sensors that measure the material’s reaction. The pressure of the impact exceeds 600 gigapascals—six million times the pressure of surface air, and
representative of conditions that would exist in a nuclear detonation.


131,979 mph


Mercury: Fastest solar system object

Like the last few rapid spins of a dropped ring before it disappears down the sink drain, Mercury is whipping around an ellipse deep inside the sun’s gravity well. The fastest of all large objects in our solar system, Mercury’s speed is greatest when it is closest to the sun.


158,000 mph


Helios Probes: World’s fastest man-made space objects

Launched into narrow elliptical orbits in 1974 and 1976, the Helios 1 and 2 probes move fastest as they skim the sun slightly inside Mercury’s orbit. At their farthest out, they reach nearly to the Earth’s orbit and slow to one fifth of their top speed.


24,759 mph


Apollo 10: World’s fastest manned spacecraft

In May, 1969, returning from a dress rehearsal for the first moon landing, Tom Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan rode the command module of Apollo 10 as it entered the atmosphere at a steeper angle than any other spaceship before or since. Their top speed of 25,000 mph is the fastest any human has ever traveled.




670,616,628.99 ... mph


Cosmic ray: Fastest known object in the universe

A cosmic ray detected by the Fly’s Eye I detector near Salt Lake City on October 15, 1991, was traveling so fast that if it raced a beam of light across the galaxy, it would lose by only five millimeters. Fifteen similar, but slightly slower, cosmic rays have been detected since, but scientists still don’t know how they are formed.


Breakneck Bugs
World’s fastest insect life cycle Bird cherry-oat aphids (Rhopalosiphum pady) take 4.7 days to complete one full generation, from the birth of one insect to the birth of that insect’s offspring. Instead of laying eggs, aphids, like vertebrates, spawn live young, which allows the species to reproduce faster than any other insect. World’s fastest bite Trap-jaw ants (Odontomachus bauri) can open and close their microscopic jaws in 0.33 millisecond, clenching their teeth 1,000 times as fast as the blink of an eye. Tiny muscles within the jaw operate like loaded springs and give the bug a biomechanical advantage in preying on fast-moving insects. The ant’s bite is faster than any other recorded animal movement, including the jellyfish’s infamous 0.5-millisecond stinger release. World’s fastest wingbeat The midge (genus Forcipomyia) beats its wings 1,046 times a second. Hummingbirds, in comparison, flap their wings about 100 times a second.


Additional reporting by Eric Adams, Sarah Goforth and William Jacobs